The Mind Which Renounces, Once

How I Envy Those Clerks Who Go By To Their Offices In The Morning! There's The Day's Work Cut Out For Them; No Question Of Mood And Feeling; They Have Just To Work At Something, And When The Evening Comes, They Have Earned Their Wages, And They Are Free To Rest And Enjoy Themselves. What An Insane Thing It Is To Make Literature One's Only Means Of Support! When The Most Trivial Accident May At Any Time Prove Fatal To One's Power Of Work For Weeks Or Months. No, That Is The Unpardonable Sin! To Make A Trade Of An Art! I Am Rightly Served For Attempting Such A Brutal Folly.

This Writer, Who Is Horribly Perspicacious And Vigorous, Demonstrates The Certainty Of A Great European War, And Regards It With The Peculiar Satisfaction Excited By Such Things In A Certain Order Of Mind. His Phrases About "dire Calamity" And So On Mean Nothing; The Whole Tenor Of His Writing Proves That He Represents, And Consciously, One Of The Forces Which Go To Bring War About; His Part In The Business Is A Fluent Irresponsibility, Which Casts Scorn On All Who Reluct At The "inevitable." Persistent Prophecy Is A Familiar Way Of Assuring The Event.

Life, I Fancy, Would Very Often Be Insupportable, But For The Luxury Of Self Compassion.

People Have Got That Ancient Prejudice So Firmly Rooted In Their Heads That One Mustn't Write Save At I The Dictation Of The Holy Spirit. I Tell You, Writing Is A Business.

Human Creatures Have A Mervellous Power Of Adapting Themselves To Necessity.